Whether you knew it or not, you're less miserable than you've been at any time since 1959. Thanks, Misery Index.

Well, it's official. Americans are the least miserable they've been since the 1950s, according to Arthur Okun's misery index. The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that the Misery Index, the sum of US inflation and the unemployment rate, hit its lowest level since 1959. Does that mean that we're back to the days of consumer paradise, when cars were 15 feet long and our only fear was nuclear obliteration?

Perhaps, perhaps not. But we can make some educated guesses about politics and the economy based on the Misery Index's historical data.

First, there's an inverse correlation between the index and incumbent presidents' odds of winning second terms, but that's irrelevant at the moment.

This probably isn't much of a revelation, but it inspired us to look for stocks that might derive particular benefit from a return to mid-century boom times. Since conventional wisdom has it that consumers devote more of their money to retail spending during good periods in the cycle, we began with the holdings of the SPDR S&P Retail ETF (XRT). To identify companies that could take the most advantage of increased consumer spending, we screened for stocks with higher gross, pretax and operating margins in the trailing twelve months (TTM) than the industry average. That ought to make anyone happy.

Click on the interactive chart to view data over time.

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The Apple Watch release is looming over traditional watchmakers. Will they be able to adapt?

Apple (AAPL) has slated its Watch event for March 9, and the unveiling could initiate strong demand for wearable technology. Apple sold a staggering number of iPhones in the previous quarter—74.5 million, to be exact. The stock, not surprisingly, has soared.

Yet if we believe IDC, a significant slowdown in market growth for smartphones could be ahead: year-on year increases in sales could drop to 6.2 percent by 2018, compared to a roaring 39 percent in 2013. If this proves to be the case, the Apple Watch could be a crucial step to transition into new markets.

Watchmakers in trouble

Demand for Apple Watch could grow rapidly if the firm manages to create a light, thin device with decent battery life. CEO Tim Cook appears confident that the battery could last an entire day, which might spell trouble for traditional watchmakers.

Firms such as Movado Group (MOV), Fossil (FOSL), Tiffany & Co (TIF) and Michael Kors (KORS) could all be on the ropes in the years ahead.

These stocks are already down by as much as 33 percent in the last year, in the case of Movado. The decline might be due to investors’ fears of competition from wearable technology. Swatch (UHRNz), for one, has embraced the trend and is updating its Swatch Touch. The new Swatch Touch Zero One is specifically marketed to volleyball players and can track hits, high hits, power hits and high fives.

Swiss watchmakers, who have been pressed by the Swiss franc’s rising value, are already raising prices for luxury watches. Their bet, write Pierre Taillefer and Nina Larson for AFP, is that consumers will be willing to pay more for “true luxury and perfection.”

Bottom line

If met with solid demand, the Apple Watch release could be a defining moment for Apple, already the world's largest company by market capitalization, and bad news for watchmakers.

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With dud movies, disappointing earnings and massive layoffs, is Dreamworks a bargain or just a bad investment?

Seeing that Disney (DIS) is trading 1.8 percent from its yearly high, while for Time Warner (TWX) the figure is 6 percent, one might assume that a fellow entertainment company like Dreamworks Animation (DWA) would follow the trend.

It turns out that's not the case. In 2014, shares traded as high as $31.35, stabilizing between $22 and $24 as investors speculated the firm would be taken over. That did not happen, and now, in the wake of disappointing fourth quarter earnings, the company must prove it can survive.

In the fourth quarter, Dreamworks lost $0.75 per share on revenue of $234.24 million. The firm was hit by restructuring charges of $210.1 million. Movies like The Penguins of Madagascar and Mr. Peabody did poorly. Its restructuring plan resulted in a staff reduction of 500. The firm also sold its campus for $185 million to SunTrust Equity Funding (STI).

The issue

The core issue is that Dreamworks is spending too much on titles that are not guaranteed to be hits. By allowing the project budget to get out of control, Dreamworks let losses grow in 2014.

One bright spot was its revenue from Television Series and Specials, which grew 7.7 percent to $50.7 million. To boost liquidity for the short term, Dreamworks increased its revolving credit facility, from $400 million to $450 million.

Risks elevated

Restructuring is never a pretty thing for companies. For Dreamworks, the company will be running with fewer staff this year. While costs will fall, it still means the company needs to release movie titles that attract an audience.

Bottom line

Dreamworks looks like a bargain stock right now, but it is filled with risks. Rumors the firm will be bought out might buoy the stock. There are no other positive catalysts at this time, but if the firm releases a hit this year, profits, and its stock price, might improve. In the meantime, it’s probably better to avoid this company.

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1. The Walt Disney Company (DIS, Earnings, Analysts, Financials): Operates as an entertainment company worldwide. Market cap at $176.89B, most recent closing price at $104.08.

3. SunTrust Banks Inc. (STI, Earnings, Analysts, Financials): Operates as the holding company for SunTrust Bank, which provides various financial services to consumer and corporate customers in the United States. Market cap at $21.51B, most recent closing price at $41.0.

4. Time Warner Inc. (TWX, Earnings, Analysts, Financials): Operates as a media and entertainment company in the United States and internationally. Market cap at $68.11B, most recent closing price at $81.86.

Kapitall Wire offers free cutting edge investing ideas, intended for educational information purposes only. It should not be construed as an offer to buy or sell securities, or any other product or service provided by Kapitall Inc., and its affiliate companies.

From Paris to the Altamont Pass, wind energy is finally getting the attention it deserves.

Visitors to the Eiffel Tower may have noticed something different about the Paris icon in the past week, depending on where they were standing. Two 17-foot wind turbines were installed in the structure last week, and while they're visible from across the Seine, they can't be distinguished from the rest of the structure if you're standing at the bottom of the tower.

Is Paris running on wind energy now? Not exactly, but 0.15 percent of the Eiffel Tower's energy consumption is now wind-generated, slightly offsetting the 6.7 GWh the structure consumes every year. No word yet on how long the turbines will take to counterbalance the energy used to haul them 400 feet into the air.

So the installation is largely "symbolic," in the words of Jan Gromadzki, who oversaw the project for Urban Green Technology. But still, it brings our attention to an often-neglected source of renewable energy. Less disaster-prone than nuclear, less photogenic than solar, wind deserves its time in the limelight.

As it turns out, it might just be getting it. Google (GOOG) announced last month that it would enter into a 20-year power purchase agreement with NextEra Energy (NEE). As part of the agreement, nearly 800 old turbines in California's Altamont Pass, some of them from the 1980s, will be replaced with nearly 50 sleek, new, less bird-kill-y installations that will contribute to Google's 35 percent renewable energy mix.

A recent invention is also adding to the buzz around wind power. Altaeros Energies, a clean energy startup that came out of MIT in 2010, has developed a flying blimp-turbine called the BAT (Buoyant Airborne Technology). Since wind is stronger and more steady at higher altitudes, the reasoning goes, why not harvest its energy up there? A 2,000-foot-tall turbine is a daunting undertaking, but a power-producing balloon at the end of a 2,000-foot cable is much more manageable. The company has received $7 million in funding from SoftBank to pursue the project, which could provide energy for a limited number of households in rural areas or in the event of a natural disaster.

But should individual investors be as cavalier as Google and SoftBank when it comes to wind energy? The First Trust ISE Global Wind Energy Index Fund (FAN) has certainly had a rough 12 months, but that's largely due to sector-wide energy woes caused by low crude oil prices. Note the correlation with Exxon (XOM):

Wind energy investments are so tied into the wider energy sector partly because there are very few pure wind energy investments out there. BP (BP) and Shell (RDS.A) alone make up close to 4 percent of FAN's investments, for example. But even if pure wind plays are scarce, investors can still get in on the action. Below are 15 stocks from FAN's holdings.

Click on the interactive chart to view data over time.

1. The AES Corporation (AES, Earnings, Analysts, Financials): 1. The AES Corporation (AES): Operates as a power company in Latin America, Africa, North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Market cap at $9.25B, most recent closing price at $12.97.

8. General Electric Company (GE, Earnings, Analysts, Financials): 8. General Electric Company (GE): Operates as a technology, service, and finance company worldwide. Market cap at $261.00B, most recent closing price at $25.99.

Kapitall Wire offers free cutting edge investing ideas, intended for educational information purposes only. It should not be construed as an offer to buy or sell securities, or any other product or service provided by Kapitall Inc., and its affiliate companies.

It took 15 years, but the Nasdaq broke 5000 today. To celebrate, here are 4 stocks that are marching upwards.

Turns out that Mondays aren't always bad. The Nasdaq Composite Index (.IXIC) hit 5000.33 Monday morning, marking the index's first above-5000 performance since March 2000. Less than an hour later, the index was back in sub-5000 territory, but the glimpse at a 5000-plus Nasdaq has many people excited. An investment advisor even toldUSA Today, "We're certainly not in bubble territory."

Wall Street is in the middle of a serious bull market: in fact, at six years, it's actually one of the longest bulls on record. Monday morning's milestone comes on the heels of the Nasdaq's 10-day winning streak in February, which the Wall Street Journal's MoneyBeat blog points out is the index's longest since July 2009.

Over at Barron's, there's talk of the Nasdaq's pricing being fairly reasonable—with a price/earnings (P/E) ratio of 21—and strong balance sheets that can help keep the Nasdaq over 5000.

CNBC is grounding the conversation with a healthy dose of reality. Peter Boockvar, chief market analyst at The Lindsey Group, noted that the Nasdaq would have to reach 6900 for it to actually reach its inflation-adjusted high. So the 5000 that everyone's excited about is more

The Nasdaq still has a way to go before it can beat its record close 5048.62 and intra-day high of 5131.52. Nevertheless, the index's long and steady climb to 5000 inspired the following screen.

Below is a list of stocks that, as of 2:45 PM EST, have passed their 52-week highs and still have positive momentum as indicated by their 50-day simple moving averages (SMA) beating their 200-day SMAs. An SMA is a stock's average price over a specific period, for example 50 days or 200 days, and when a stock's short-term SMA exceeds its long-term SMA, it shows that the stock has strong upward potential. This means that these stocks, which have already reached new 52-week highs, could rise further.

And in the spirit of fair and reasonable pricing, the listed stocks all have a price to earnings growth (PEG) ratio below 1. This valuation ratio factors in expected growth and is calculated by dividing a stock's P/E ratio by its annual earnings per share (EPS) growth. When a stock's PEG is under 1, it may be considered undervalued.

The stock is trading 1.38% above its 52-week high. It is also trading 28.47% above its 50-day SMA of 57.16 and 42.12% above its 200-day SMA of 51.81.

Performance year-to-date at 66.40%.

PEG at 0.69.

Astronics Corporation trades on the Nasdaq Composite Index.

3. Cambrex Corporation (CBM, Earnings, Analysts, Financials): Provides products and services for the development and commercialization of new and generic therapeutics. Market cap at $1.07B, most recent closing price at $34.25.

The stock is trading 0.57% above its 52-week high. It is also trading 37.59% above its 50-day SMA of 27.17 and 57.44% above its 200-day SMA of 22.71.

Performance year-to-date at 87.80%.

PEG at 0.89.

Cambrex Corporation trades on the New York Stock Exchange.

4. Riverview Bancorp Inc. (RVSB, Earnings, Analysts, Financials): Operates as the holding company for Riverview Community Bank that provides commercial and business banking products and services in Washington and Oregon. Market cap at $101.12M, most recent closing price at $4.50.

The stock is trading 3.47% above its 52-week high. It is also trading 1.40% above its 50-day SMA of 4.42 and 11.23% above its 200-day SMA of 4.14.

Kapitall Wire offers free cutting edge investing ideas, intended for educational information purposes only. It should not be construed as an offer to buy or sell securities, or any other product or service provided by Kapitall Inc., and its affiliate companies.

Value investors should pay attention when stocks fall steadily from previous highs. Kandi Technologies (KNDI) is a perfect example. Share prices peaked on July 22 at $22.49 and bottomed out on December 16, at a 52-week low of $10.30. Since then, the vehicle maker’s stock has rebounded slowly, the primary reason being that the SEC has closed its investigation into the company.

Kandi is a pure electric vehicle maker that runs a joint venture car-share program in China. The company reported sales of $44.21 million for the quarter ending September 30 and announced in December that it delivered 700 EVs to a distributor in Guangzhou. Altogether, the firm delivered 14,398 units in 2014.

Kandis’ success is in stark contrast to Tesla’s (TSLA) troubles in China. Forbes has called the company’s venture into the Chinese market a “flop,” noting that Tesla China imported just 444 units in December, a sharp drop from 747 the previous month. June Jin, Tesla China’s Vice President of Communications, left the company after less than a year on the job, and CEO Elon Musk has threatened further layoffs.

For the last year, Tesla and Kandi’s stocks are performing roughly the same, but this could change soon. Car-sharing is rapidly becoming an established trend in China, and the government has extended subsidies for electric vehicles to 2020, which may stimulate demand for domestic EV manufacturers.

In terms of valuation, Kandi is much more appealing than Tesla. The stock trades at 3.1 times book, compared to 27.1 for Tesla. Kandi’s debt to equity ratio is 0.23, compared to 2.51 for Tesla.

On the other hand, judging by its stock price, Tesla’s branding value is enormous. Founder Elon Musk is confident the firm could be worth as much as Apple by 2025. In the U.S., where Tesla has enjoyed strong demand, mass adoption will ultimately depend on the availability of superchargers.

Bottom line

Neither Tesla nor Kandi’s stock is without risk. Tesla’s valuation is scary, but the firm is expecting better sales for its flagship Model S. Kandi’s business may now be beyond the concerns of the SEC, but renewed worries may emerge. The latter scenario is likely: the short float on Kandi’s stock is 25.50 percent.

Kapitall Wire offers free cutting edge investing ideas, intended for educational information purposes only. It should not be construed as an offer to buy or sell securities, or any other product or service provided by Kapitall Inc., and its affiliate companies.